RESEARCH FOR SILLY BILLY: TECHNICAL COLLEGES’ STUDENTS CONDUCT A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to define a new framework helping Saudi technical college students to conduct a first piece of research in terms of a bachelor thesis. The research proposed therefore a framework where helping students to understand not only resource referencing, data collection, data analysis and problem solving but also academic writing and project management. The data were collected from Saudi Bachelor students at Technical Trainer College Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Students were asked to conduct a bachelor thesis within 3 months as a fulfillment to obtain their bachelor degree in engineering. The researcher conduct an experiment to test the impact of the proposed framework on students’ learning and attitudes towards research. The proposed framework consists of 7 weekly lectures and individuals’ consultation in person and also online. Students then were asked to fill out a survey expressing their attitudes towards the program. In addition, the researcher conducted a brainstorming with in the focused group to investigate more details. The results indicates not only a positive attitude among students for learning academic writing and research methodology, but also reduce the number of falsification and avoid the acquisition of plagiarism.